The question is: what impact does that financing have a sizable portion of the public already supports those views? Conversely, how much impact can corporate financing have when a clear majority of people disagree with those views?

The $1 billion in PAC money in 2012 seems to have had very little impact on the election, other than to pump up the people who already agreed with the messages in the ads.

> The $1 billion in PAC money in 2012 seems to have had very little impact on the election, other than to pump up the people who already agreed with the messages in the ads.

There are at least three ways that money can have an effect that come to mind. The first is determining who wins; this is the kind you're talking about. The second is determining who can run; the winners of the primaries in both parties have as far as I can remember also been the top fundraisers going in to the primaries. Is it sticky which is the cause and which is the effect? Of course. But I have no doubt it's an amplification.

The third way is, I think, the most perverse. Only a very narrow range of political perspectives are capable of making it to the mainstream, since they first have to win the money election in order to make it anywhere.

Frankly we have no idea what the political landscape would look like with citizen funded elections. Maybe it would look exactly the same, in which case your hypothesis that the government we have is already representative would be proven correct. Right now we have no idea, and that's why I support citizen funded elections.